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For God's sakes ... What underpins this need for social media companies to virtue signal about protecting 'election integrity' is the false notion that 2016 was

For God's sakes ... What underpins this need for social media companies to virtue signal about protecting 'election integrity' is the false notion that 2016 was stolen from Hillary by the Russians - a claim that had no evidential support (and no, that some trolls bought a minuscule amount of Facebook ads does not raise this claim to that level) but the entire Democratic party, with media allies, promulgated for the last 4 years and pressured social media leadership to adopt as well. And now social media companies are engaged in full-scale curation and editorial control over any content that even comes close to questioning or even having regular open discussion of unfolding events. Ridiculous. > Since September, we've terminated over 8000 channels and thousands of harmful and misleading elections-related videos for violating our existing policies. Over 77% of those removed videos were taken down before they had 100 views. Yay! Thank you YouTube interns for protecting me from making up my own mind about these dangerous ideas. I also like that the authoritative sources are ... the same media companies, owned by multinational corporate conglomerates, that are always pushing for deplatforming of independent news sources. No self-serving policies here! Tell me again NYTimes how Philip DeFranco and Joe Rogan are a gateway to the alt-right.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
You are mis-stating the assertion. The Government said that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election. They didn't say it changed the results.
- rayiner 6y ago
  No, Democrats said Russia hacked the election results. For example Neera Tanden, Biden's OMB appointee, the President of a major liberal think-tank: https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/817744398939197442 https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/817744398939197442 Trump claimed that "Voting machines were not touched" by Russians in the 2016 election. Tanden said that was a "lie." The media massively amplified claims of Russian election hacking that never panned out: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/us/politics/russia-election-hacking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/us/politics/russia-electi.... They played fast-and-loose with terminology, saying that "Russia hacked the 2016 election" when they meant that Russia hacked and leaked DNC emails. (Part of the problem here is that the media has taken to regurgitating Democratic talking points. Saying "Russia hacked the 2016 election" is a clever way for an Democratic activist to describe what happened, but its misleading when that same "hacking" terminology is used by the media.) Nalder said that, without impeachment, Trump would "rig" the 2020 election: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-08/nadler-says-without-impeachment-trump-may-try-to-rig-election https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-08/nadler-sa... And people believed them. Even as of 2018, 66% of Democrats believed that "Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected President": https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/03/09/russias-impact-election-seen-through-partisan-eyes https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
  - tptacek 6y ago
    The comment to which you're replying said "the government" didn't claim Russia tampered with the results. You can't rebut that with a cite of Neera Tanden, who was not in the government.
    - Supermancho 6y ago
      The 2 parties govern the US, for better or worse. The good faith interpretation allows for more than the official press releases (eg Trump talking points), which are presented to be in dispute.
    - rayiner 6y ago
      Fair point, I read "Democrats" rather than "Government."
      - tptacek 6y ago
        I'm going to gently push harder, because I don't think you can reasonably compare what angry Democrats said and did in 2016 to what's happening in 2020. Nobody attempted to overturn any state's electors. The sitting Democratic president didn't directly lobby state governors and state house speakers to decertify results. For that matter: Democrats didn't deliberately fuck up tabulation processes to sow chaos to exploit later in the month.
        zaroth 6y ago
        There were many calls by Democrats for faithless electors to flip to Clinton. See, for example, #UniteForAmerica video plea https://youtu.be/0z0iuWh3sek https://youtu.be/0z0iuWh3sek They then spent the next few years making up conspiracy theories and trying to delegitimize his election. I’d gently suggest that there are no clean hands here, and what Dems did 2016-2019 was sufficiently reprehensible.
        tptacek 6y ago
        You've met my example of the outgoing administration lobbying state legislatures to overturn their own votes with a hashtag.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  That's not at all what people were screaming for the past four years. Even if Russian "meddled" in the US elections, so did Boeing, BASF, Microsoft, Facebook, Northrop Grumman, Softbank, YCombinator .. anyone who bought a fucking ad or funded one campaign. What the Russian/2016 narrative really was: Americans are too stupid to make up their own minds and fall for propaganda. There has been a four year campaign to condemn every single Trump supporter as some kind of racist, white supremacist Nazi, and it's been big media and big tech (FOX/MSNBC/CNN/YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/NYTimes/etc.) that's literally been pouring petrol on the American people and the world.
  - sdenton4 6y ago
    Believe it or not, there's a whole host of laws around and against foreign involvement in American elections, going back basically forever. Comparing Boeing and Russia is pretty ludicrous.
    - Gunax 6y ago
      I am curious what these laws are, and what constitutes involvement. Am I allowed to comment on American elections even if I am not American? A lot of people here are talking about interference, which sounds like a very nefarious thing. But in reality, what they mean by 'interference' is just posting on the internet about why one candidate (let's be real, probably Trump) is better.
      - sdenton4 6y ago
        The two big categories in my mind are foreign campaign contributions (usually misdirected through others, so sometimes also fall out as fraud and money laundering charges) and failure to register as a foreign agent. As a reminder, both of these categories have seen grand jury charges and subsequent guilty pleas by Trump associates. These have often paired nicely with 'lying to prosecutors' charges, which help clarify that they knew they were up to no good... https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1886-indictment-giuliani-associates/a5dd834e350dc3b860c2/optimized/full.pdf#page=1 https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1886-indictment-giul... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Flynn#Investigations_after_leaving_the_Trump_administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Flynn#Investigations_a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort#Indictments_and_charges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort#Indictments_and_...
- cwkoss 6y ago
  "Meddled" is such an ambiguous term and we are part of an international community. Using such loose terminology, couldn't you accurately say dozens of nations meddled with the majority of federal US elections in the past 50 years? If you disagree, what do you think the function of AIPAC is?
  - shakezula 6y ago
    Yes, including Iran, so what's your point? A bipartisan commission found overwhelming evidence of a widespread, organized, and coordinated effort from several foreign agencies to spread misinformation during both the 2016 election and the 2020 election. What term do you want to use besides "meddling" then?
    - cwkoss 6y ago
      Would be great if they used a term that correlates to a specific crime. "Meddling" is pervasive and legal, so accusations of meddling seem like propaganda from the intelligence community.
- kart23 6y ago
  This documentary got nominated for tons of awards. And it heavily insinuates that the election was stolen/cheated and the outcome could have been different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Hack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Hack
badconvincer 6y ago
“Virtue signaling” Being a good person? No one needs to tell you anything again, you got it right the first time.
drchopchop 6y ago
The problem is the "regular open discussion", which has turned into a cesspool of fact-free ranting, and has created serious societal virality and negative impact. You can rant against the mainstream media, but at least there is a modicum of fact checking and research there -- how many independent YouTube sources do the same?
- quotemstr 6y ago
  Why should regular people trust the Bay Area perspective on what counts as "fact-free ranting"? Tech has no legitimate authority to decide what is true. The mindset and moral system that's overwhelmingly dominant in tech is abhorrent to much of the rest of the country and the world. Why should this prominent but fringe Bay Area mentality dominate? It's simply not tech's place to be making these calls. It's arrogance and hubris and it's going to lead to a backlash.
  - drchopchop 6y ago
    Who, then, decides what is true? Random YouTube commenters? Joe Rogan? Rush Limbaugh? The QAnon Twitter-sphere? Perhaps we can just vote on whether gravity exists.
    - quotemstr 6y ago
      Why does anyone need to decide what is true? Each person can decide for himself in his own heart what he believes. We reach consensus through discussion. There is never, not once, in any situation whatsoever a justification for forcing a particular perspective on the public instead of letting the marketplace of ideas function and find the truth organically. This idea that certain ideas are dangerous and must be suppressed is the mark of every insecure tyranny. Secure beliefs don't need to be propped up with censorship, and a belief isn't secure, it's because it's just not adequately backed up by facts.
      - drchopchop 6y ago
        The marketplace is broken. A non-trivial amount of people believe the earth is flat. People are becoming immune to fact-based evidence, because they get to immerse themselves in an alternate universe which tells them that they're right. Soon the ramifications won't be restricted to people shooting up pizza parlors.
gaurav90sharma 6y ago
I guess the difference between 2016 and 2020 outcomes is that democrats at least didn't create any ruckus during the power transfer from Obama to Trump . Plus, since the Democrats did it , the Republicans have a right to create a bigger ruckus is not justified. Also the Russian interference was more about social media influence rather than raising questions on election or voter integrity. A lot of Trump supporters are openly coming out with arms these days , hence propagating rigged election claims is or so more dangerous.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >I guess the difference between 2016 and 2020 outcomes is that democrats at least didn't create any ruckus during the power transfer from Obama to Trump Crossfire Hurricane wasn't enough of a ruckus? It came out recently that Eric Swalwell was targeted by a Chinese spy, but cut ties after a 'defensive briefing' by the FBI. Hillary's campaign also received a 'defensive briefing' in 2015 when a foreign government tried to influence her campaign through a campaign associate. Trump's campaign never got one, instead FBI ordered an investigation on the flimsies grounds and outright lies to the FISA courts (and what turned out to be opo-research funded by the Hillary campaign and promulgating actual Russian disinformation).. And then the next four years had Hillary going around saying explicitly that Trump is not a legitimate president - a claim not challenged by media and echoed by the Democrats. The media itself kept pushing the discredit Steele dossier throughout that time. So I do roll my eyes when political activists in the Democratic party and media are now all about 'election integrity' after what they did to the trust in the system over the last 4 years. And I'm not really worried about Trump bitching on Twitter and putting out lawsuits (as is his right), as some threat to Democracy.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    He has the right to put out lawsuits. He looks like a buffoon, but he has the right. He does not have the right to ask state governors to ignore the election results and appoint electors who will vote for Trump. That is far beyond the legitimate exercise of Trump's rights.
pupppet 6y ago
Still going on about boogieman Hillary 4 years later. You've just proven why YouTube needs to take these steps, time to step out of your alt-right bubble.
- throwaway49491 6y ago
  I'll be monitoring this post by "puppet" to make sure that "dang" removes it the way he removes all posts that are remotely anti-narrative (leftist).
- macspoofing 6y ago
  YouTube IS taking these steps, so don't worry about that. They aren't waiting for me to prove to them anything. Reminds me of the exchange between William Roper and Thomas More. After More balked at arresting someone who hasn't broken any laws, Roper stated that he'd "cut down every law in England" to get the Devil. More answered: "And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide" Once the tech and media conglomerates take the mantle of curation and censorship, it's only a matter of time before you run afoul and get dragged under as well. You feel safe now because you feel they share your political beliefs, but that will change.
deleted 6y ago
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brundolf 6y ago
The content being taken down isn't just harmful in theory, or from the perspective of one political party. It kills people. https://www.wired.com/story/christchurch-shooter-youtube-radicalization-extremism/ https://www.wired.com/story/christchurch-shooter-youtube-rad... Of course, if YouTube (and others) actually cared about helping, they would change or remove their algorithmic feed, which is the real crux of the problem. But that hits their bottom line more than pulling down individual pieces of content does, so here we are.
rat87 6y ago
The problem is not just that the Russians tried to interfere with our election. It's that President Trump openly invited their illegal meddling and likely conspired with them and then tried to drop sanctions on then after the election
- theandrewbailey 6y ago
  There was an investigation taking years and several million dollars that was politically motivated to prove that was true. The investigation couldn't prove it.
  - mhoad 6y ago
    I know that for a lot of people the report ended up getting reduced down to a handful of 2-4 sound bites but there isn’t a single word in the parent post that is incorrect. The reality is that the report was almost 500 pages of nuance. This seems like an ok overview https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
an_opabinia 6y ago
What underpins the visceral emotions you feel? If you're entitled to rant on the Internet, if you feel some payoff to that, don't you think someone is entitled to "virtue signal?" Isn't "virtual signaling" just, "someone else's passion about something, but that something is just not something I personally feel passionate about?"
throwaway1959 6y ago
The current Tech Companies news narratives makes no logical sense to me. Here is why: We were told that Russia interfered in 2016 elections and helped to elect Trump. Now, we are told that 2020 elections were of the highest integrity. Why wouldn't Russia interfere in 2020 elections? Were they scared of Trump administration? But wait, we were told that Trump was Russian puppet, so they would be scared of him, right? So again, why wouldn't Russia interfere in 2020 elections? Or did Russia interfered in 2020 election, "just as they did in 2016", and elected Biden this time? In short, Tech Media narrative does not make sense to me. And all censorship eventually fails, just take a look at the Fall of Socialism in the Soviet Union.
Alex3917 6y ago
> the entire Democratic party, with media allies, promulgated for the last 4 years and pressured social media leadership to adopt as well. Democrats have claimed pretty every election for the last 20 years has been stolen, or at least could have been stolen, due to dominion's voting machines having the ability to flip votes undetected. Bev Harris's book Black Box Voting literally came out in 2003.[1] Now apparently not only was this election the first not to have been stolen, but it's not even a possibility that something like that could happen. Go figure. [1] https://blackboxvoting.org/ https://blackboxvoting.org/
warlord1 6y ago
I'm with you bro. We are numbered 100-to-1 in forums like this where it's very kitschy to unknowingly assent to facist censorship. I love that you mention Joe Rogan. He's one of the leading Progressives that is bringing up how hypocrticial censorship has in Big Tech. Everybody knows how absurd censorship has gotten in the last decade –– most noticably since Trump was elected.
feoren 6y ago
It's weird to me that we still have people that still cling to the idea that censorship and curation of content is always evil and every site on the Internet should allow completely unmoderated speech, when we've seen over and over and over that such sites always devolve into festering echo-chambers of hatred and racism. Always. Every time. Not only are you conveniently ignoring that reality, but you're also ignoring the fact that humans are humans. False information is much more powerful than true information, and "making up your own mind" is simply not possible when you are bombarded with orders of magnitude more false information that has been carefully constructed and self-selected to misinform you and appeal to your emotions. Stop. Just stop. You're not helping. You're not enlightened. You're part of the problem.
- nyczomg 6y ago
  "It's weird to me that we still have people that still cling to the idea that censorship and curation of content is always evil and every site on the Internet should allow completely unmoderated speech, when we've seen over and over and over that such sites always devolve into festering echo-chambers of hatred and racism. Always. Every time." I'd find your comment much more interesting if you actually argued against the OP's point rather than this strawman.
- swalsh 6y ago
  "False information is much more powerful than true information" So apparently you believe individuals aren't capable of responsibly enjoying freedom, and thus should concede automomy of thought to the elite for what information they can consume or spread? Some people can't handle their alchohol, but prohibiting the sale of alcohol didn't solve the probelm. Some individuals have problems, so the way to deal with that is at the individual level. Sorry the solution doesn't scale well. Freedom is great, but it's kind of expensive.
  - feoren 6y ago
    Targeted misinformation campaigns are capable of destroying freedom just as easily as any authoritarian government -- in fact the former is always a tool of the latter. Therefore I can rephrase your last sentence as "Freedom is great, but it comes at the cost of freedom." People choose to consume alcohol knowing it will get them drunk. People do not choose to be lied to. A better analogy is saying that the government should not attempt to regulate what companies put in the food they sell, because then I must believe individuals aren't capable of self-determining what is or is not safe for them to eat. Correct: I do not believe in "buyer beware" for food nor for facts.
dillondoyle 6y ago
Can you show that a significant % of the public/swing voters or sitting out 'Dems' swayed by Russia? Most Democratic political workers would tell you that Comey and the emails is the #1 factor. It amplified built in brand of Clinton corruption and Comey broke long standing policy at basically the perfect time to do perfect damage. Sure some of this was amplified by Russia but I don't know a single professional that would say Russia had a larger impact than the emails/Comey.
- acdha 6y ago
  You can’t separate the two easily because the DNC email hack and “DCLeaks” front group was attributed to Russia by the U.S. intelligence community, as extensively covered in the Mueller report, and a large amount of social media activity around both email stories and other topics was conducted by the Russian Internet Research Agency. Comey had more significance but the flurry of allegations had more than minor involvement of Russian assets and people weren’t reacting to just one detail but the whole barrage. Pizzagate is still around now and that started with the Russian spearphisher who got Podesta’s emails.
  - dillondoyle 6y ago
    Sorry to be clear I was talking about Hillary Clinton's misuse of private email as SoS. Didn't involve Russia to my knowledge - though I would not be surprised most larger nation states hacked there way in. Sure Russia probably amplified it but it was wall to wall across ALL media a few days before the election - when undecideds are going to vote. And the big damage from the first hit. The corruption, thinks she is above the rules, tarmac with Lynch etc. That hit really hard with the small slice of swing voters and maybe more importantly reduced turnout from Ds I don't think anyone who would believe pizza gate would ever vote for Hillary lol e.g. not a swing voter to begin with
    - acdha 6y ago
      Sorry, my response needed to better clarify with a complicated mess like this. The idea I was trying to get at with “both email stories” was the attempts to blur everything together - trying to use the DNC email acknowledgment to lend credibility to all of the other stories. There were a lot of self-proclaimed infosec experts posting about how disqualifying it was. I completely agree that Comey bringing it back into the front page played a bigger role but I wouldn’t rule out all of the social media trolling having more than a little influence. It seemed to leave a lot of reporters covering non-stories lest they be accused of bias again.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago

You are mis-stating the assertion. The Government said that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election. They didn't say it changed the results.

rayiner 6y ago
No, Democrats said Russia hacked the election results. For example Neera Tanden, Biden's OMB appointee, the President of a major liberal think-tank: https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/817744398939197442 https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/817744398939197442 Trump claimed that "Voting machines were not touched" by Russians in the 2016 election. Tanden said that was a "lie." The media massively amplified claims of Russian election hacking that never panned out: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/us/politics/russia-election-hacking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/us/politics/russia-electi.... They played fast-and-loose with terminology, saying that "Russia hacked the 2016 election" when they meant that Russia hacked and leaked DNC emails. (Part of the problem here is that the media has taken to regurgitating Democratic talking points. Saying "Russia hacked the 2016 election" is a clever way for an Democratic activist to describe what happened, but its misleading when that same "hacking" terminology is used by the media.) Nalder said that, without impeachment, Trump would "rig" the 2020 election: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-08/nadler-says-without-impeachment-trump-may-try-to-rig-election https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-08/nadler-sa... And people believed them. Even as of 2018, 66% of Democrats believed that "Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected President": https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/03/09/russias-impact-election-seen-through-partisan-eyes https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
- tptacek 6y ago
  The comment to which you're replying said "the government" didn't claim Russia tampered with the results. You can't rebut that with a cite of Neera Tanden, who was not in the government.
  - Supermancho 6y ago
    The 2 parties govern the US, for better or worse. The good faith interpretation allows for more than the official press releases (eg Trump talking points), which are presented to be in dispute.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Fair point, I read "Democrats" rather than "Government."
    - tptacek 6y ago
      I'm going to gently push harder, because I don't think you can reasonably compare what angry Democrats said and did in 2016 to what's happening in 2020. Nobody attempted to overturn any state's electors. The sitting Democratic president didn't directly lobby state governors and state house speakers to decertify results. For that matter: Democrats didn't deliberately fuck up tabulation processes to sow chaos to exploit later in the month.
      - zaroth 6y ago
        There were many calls by Democrats for faithless electors to flip to Clinton. See, for example, #UniteForAmerica video plea https://youtu.be/0z0iuWh3sek https://youtu.be/0z0iuWh3sek They then spent the next few years making up conspiracy theories and trying to delegitimize his election. I’d gently suggest that there are no clean hands here, and what Dems did 2016-2019 was sufficiently reprehensible.
        tptacek 6y ago
        You've met my example of the outgoing administration lobbying state legislatures to overturn their own votes with a hashtag.
djsumdog 6y ago
That's not at all what people were screaming for the past four years. Even if Russian "meddled" in the US elections, so did Boeing, BASF, Microsoft, Facebook, Northrop Grumman, Softbank, YCombinator .. anyone who bought a fucking ad or funded one campaign. What the Russian/2016 narrative really was: Americans are too stupid to make up their own minds and fall for propaganda. There has been a four year campaign to condemn every single Trump supporter as some kind of racist, white supremacist Nazi, and it's been big media and big tech (FOX/MSNBC/CNN/YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/NYTimes/etc.) that's literally been pouring petrol on the American people and the world.
- sdenton4 6y ago
  Believe it or not, there's a whole host of laws around and against foreign involvement in American elections, going back basically forever. Comparing Boeing and Russia is pretty ludicrous.
  - Gunax 6y ago
    I am curious what these laws are, and what constitutes involvement. Am I allowed to comment on American elections even if I am not American? A lot of people here are talking about interference, which sounds like a very nefarious thing. But in reality, what they mean by 'interference' is just posting on the internet about why one candidate (let's be real, probably Trump) is better.
    - sdenton4 6y ago
      The two big categories in my mind are foreign campaign contributions (usually misdirected through others, so sometimes also fall out as fraud and money laundering charges) and failure to register as a foreign agent. As a reminder, both of these categories have seen grand jury charges and subsequent guilty pleas by Trump associates. These have often paired nicely with 'lying to prosecutors' charges, which help clarify that they knew they were up to no good... https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1886-indictment-giuliani-associates/a5dd834e350dc3b860c2/optimized/full.pdf#page=1 https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1886-indictment-giul... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Flynn#Investigations_after_leaving_the_Trump_administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Flynn#Investigations_a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort#Indictments_and_charges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort#Indictments_and_...
cwkoss 6y ago
"Meddled" is such an ambiguous term and we are part of an international community. Using such loose terminology, couldn't you accurately say dozens of nations meddled with the majority of federal US elections in the past 50 years? If you disagree, what do you think the function of AIPAC is?
- shakezula 6y ago
  Yes, including Iran, so what's your point? A bipartisan commission found overwhelming evidence of a widespread, organized, and coordinated effort from several foreign agencies to spread misinformation during both the 2016 election and the 2020 election. What term do you want to use besides "meddling" then?
  - cwkoss 6y ago
    Would be great if they used a term that correlates to a specific crime. "Meddling" is pervasive and legal, so accusations of meddling seem like propaganda from the intelligence community.
kart23 6y ago
This documentary got nominated for tons of awards. And it heavily insinuates that the election was stolen/cheated and the outcome could have been different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Hack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Hack

badconvincer 6y ago

“Virtue signaling” Being a good person? No one needs to tell you anything again, you got it right the first time.

drchopchop 6y ago

The problem is the "regular open discussion", which has turned into a cesspool of fact-free ranting, and has created serious societal virality and negative impact. You can rant against the mainstream media, but at least there is a modicum of fact checking and research there -- how many independent YouTube sources do the same?

quotemstr 6y ago
Why should regular people trust the Bay Area perspective on what counts as "fact-free ranting"? Tech has no legitimate authority to decide what is true. The mindset and moral system that's overwhelmingly dominant in tech is abhorrent to much of the rest of the country and the world. Why should this prominent but fringe Bay Area mentality dominate? It's simply not tech's place to be making these calls. It's arrogance and hubris and it's going to lead to a backlash.
- drchopchop 6y ago
  Who, then, decides what is true? Random YouTube commenters? Joe Rogan? Rush Limbaugh? The QAnon Twitter-sphere? Perhaps we can just vote on whether gravity exists.
  - quotemstr 6y ago
    Why does anyone need to decide what is true? Each person can decide for himself in his own heart what he believes. We reach consensus through discussion. There is never, not once, in any situation whatsoever a justification for forcing a particular perspective on the public instead of letting the marketplace of ideas function and find the truth organically. This idea that certain ideas are dangerous and must be suppressed is the mark of every insecure tyranny. Secure beliefs don't need to be propped up with censorship, and a belief isn't secure, it's because it's just not adequately backed up by facts.
    - drchopchop 6y ago
      The marketplace is broken. A non-trivial amount of people believe the earth is flat. People are becoming immune to fact-based evidence, because they get to immerse themselves in an alternate universe which tells them that they're right. Soon the ramifications won't be restricted to people shooting up pizza parlors.

gaurav90sharma 6y ago

I guess the difference between 2016 and 2020 outcomes is that democrats at least didn't create any ruckus during the power transfer from Obama to Trump . Plus, since the Democrats did it , the Republicans have a right to create a bigger ruckus is not justified. Also the Russian interference was more about social media influence rather than raising questions on election or voter integrity. A lot of Trump supporters are openly coming out with arms these days , hence propagating rigged election claims is or so more dangerous.

macspoofing 6y ago
>I guess the difference between 2016 and 2020 outcomes is that democrats at least didn't create any ruckus during the power transfer from Obama to Trump Crossfire Hurricane wasn't enough of a ruckus? It came out recently that Eric Swalwell was targeted by a Chinese spy, but cut ties after a 'defensive briefing' by the FBI. Hillary's campaign also received a 'defensive briefing' in 2015 when a foreign government tried to influence her campaign through a campaign associate. Trump's campaign never got one, instead FBI ordered an investigation on the flimsies grounds and outright lies to the FISA courts (and what turned out to be opo-research funded by the Hillary campaign and promulgating actual Russian disinformation).. And then the next four years had Hillary going around saying explicitly that Trump is not a legitimate president - a claim not challenged by media and echoed by the Democrats. The media itself kept pushing the discredit Steele dossier throughout that time. So I do roll my eyes when political activists in the Democratic party and media are now all about 'election integrity' after what they did to the trust in the system over the last 4 years. And I'm not really worried about Trump bitching on Twitter and putting out lawsuits (as is his right), as some threat to Democracy.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  He has the right to put out lawsuits. He looks like a buffoon, but he has the right. He does not have the right to ask state governors to ignore the election results and appoint electors who will vote for Trump. That is far beyond the legitimate exercise of Trump's rights.

pupppet 6y ago

Still going on about boogieman Hillary 4 years later. You've just proven why YouTube needs to take these steps, time to step out of your alt-right bubble.

throwaway49491 6y ago
I'll be monitoring this post by "puppet" to make sure that "dang" removes it the way he removes all posts that are remotely anti-narrative (leftist).
macspoofing 6y ago
YouTube IS taking these steps, so don't worry about that. They aren't waiting for me to prove to them anything. Reminds me of the exchange between William Roper and Thomas More. After More balked at arresting someone who hasn't broken any laws, Roper stated that he'd "cut down every law in England" to get the Devil. More answered: "And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide" Once the tech and media conglomerates take the mantle of curation and censorship, it's only a matter of time before you run afoul and get dragged under as well. You feel safe now because you feel they share your political beliefs, but that will change.

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brundolf 6y ago

The content being taken down isn't just harmful in theory, or from the perspective of one political party. It kills people. https://www.wired.com/story/christchurch-shooter-youtube-radicalization-extremism/ https://www.wired.com/story/christchurch-shooter-youtube-rad... Of course, if YouTube (and others) actually cared about helping, they would change or remove their algorithmic feed, which is the real crux of the problem. But that hits their bottom line more than pulling down individual pieces of content does, so here we are.

rat87 6y ago

The problem is not just that the Russians tried to interfere with our election. It's that President Trump openly invited their illegal meddling and likely conspired with them and then tried to drop sanctions on then after the election

theandrewbailey 6y ago
There was an investigation taking years and several million dollars that was politically motivated to prove that was true. The investigation couldn't prove it.
- mhoad 6y ago
  I know that for a lot of people the report ended up getting reduced down to a handful of 2-4 sound bites but there isn’t a single word in the parent post that is incorrect. The reality is that the report was almost 500 pages of nuance. This seems like an ok overview https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report

an_opabinia 6y ago

What underpins the visceral emotions you feel? If you're entitled to rant on the Internet, if you feel some payoff to that, don't you think someone is entitled to "virtue signal?" Isn't "virtual signaling" just, "someone else's passion about something, but that something is just not something I personally feel passionate about?"

throwaway1959 6y ago

The current Tech Companies news narratives makes no logical sense to me. Here is why: We were told that Russia interfered in 2016 elections and helped to elect Trump. Now, we are told that 2020 elections were of the highest integrity. Why wouldn't Russia interfere in 2020 elections? Were they scared of Trump administration? But wait, we were told that Trump was Russian puppet, so they would be scared of him, right? So again, why wouldn't Russia interfere in 2020 elections? Or did Russia interfered in 2020 election, "just as they did in 2016", and elected Biden this time? In short, Tech Media narrative does not make sense to me. And all censorship eventually fails, just take a look at the Fall of Socialism in the Soviet Union.

Alex3917 6y ago

> the entire Democratic party, with media allies, promulgated for the last 4 years and pressured social media leadership to adopt as well. Democrats have claimed pretty every election for the last 20 years has been stolen, or at least could have been stolen, due to dominion's voting machines having the ability to flip votes undetected. Bev Harris's book Black Box Voting literally came out in 2003.[1] Now apparently not only was this election the first not to have been stolen, but it's not even a possibility that something like that could happen. Go figure. [1] https://blackboxvoting.org/ https://blackboxvoting.org/

warlord1 6y ago

I'm with you bro. We are numbered 100-to-1 in forums like this where it's very kitschy to unknowingly assent to facist censorship. I love that you mention Joe Rogan. He's one of the leading Progressives that is bringing up how hypocrticial censorship has in Big Tech. Everybody knows how absurd censorship has gotten in the last decade –– most noticably since Trump was elected.

feoren 6y ago

It's weird to me that we still have people that still cling to the idea that censorship and curation of content is always evil and every site on the Internet should allow completely unmoderated speech, when we've seen over and over and over that such sites always devolve into festering echo-chambers of hatred and racism. Always. Every time. Not only are you conveniently ignoring that reality, but you're also ignoring the fact that humans are humans. False information is much more powerful than true information, and "making up your own mind" is simply not possible when you are bombarded with orders of magnitude more false information that has been carefully constructed and self-selected to misinform you and appeal to your emotions. Stop. Just stop. You're not helping. You're not enlightened. You're part of the problem.

nyczomg 6y ago
"It's weird to me that we still have people that still cling to the idea that censorship and curation of content is always evil and every site on the Internet should allow completely unmoderated speech, when we've seen over and over and over that such sites always devolve into festering echo-chambers of hatred and racism. Always. Every time." I'd find your comment much more interesting if you actually argued against the OP's point rather than this strawman.
swalsh 6y ago
"False information is much more powerful than true information" So apparently you believe individuals aren't capable of responsibly enjoying freedom, and thus should concede automomy of thought to the elite for what information they can consume or spread? Some people can't handle their alchohol, but prohibiting the sale of alcohol didn't solve the probelm. Some individuals have problems, so the way to deal with that is at the individual level. Sorry the solution doesn't scale well. Freedom is great, but it's kind of expensive.
- feoren 6y ago
  Targeted misinformation campaigns are capable of destroying freedom just as easily as any authoritarian government -- in fact the former is always a tool of the latter. Therefore I can rephrase your last sentence as "Freedom is great, but it comes at the cost of freedom." People choose to consume alcohol knowing it will get them drunk. People do not choose to be lied to. A better analogy is saying that the government should not attempt to regulate what companies put in the food they sell, because then I must believe individuals aren't capable of self-determining what is or is not safe for them to eat. Correct: I do not believe in "buyer beware" for food nor for facts.

dillondoyle 6y ago

Can you show that a significant % of the public/swing voters or sitting out 'Dems' swayed by Russia? Most Democratic political workers would tell you that Comey and the emails is the #1 factor. It amplified built in brand of Clinton corruption and Comey broke long standing policy at basically the perfect time to do perfect damage. Sure some of this was amplified by Russia but I don't know a single professional that would say Russia had a larger impact than the emails/Comey.

acdha 6y ago
You can’t separate the two easily because the DNC email hack and “DCLeaks” front group was attributed to Russia by the U.S. intelligence community, as extensively covered in the Mueller report, and a large amount of social media activity around both email stories and other topics was conducted by the Russian Internet Research Agency. Comey had more significance but the flurry of allegations had more than minor involvement of Russian assets and people weren’t reacting to just one detail but the whole barrage. Pizzagate is still around now and that started with the Russian spearphisher who got Podesta’s emails.
- dillondoyle 6y ago
  Sorry to be clear I was talking about Hillary Clinton's misuse of private email as SoS. Didn't involve Russia to my knowledge - though I would not be surprised most larger nation states hacked there way in. Sure Russia probably amplified it but it was wall to wall across ALL media a few days before the election - when undecideds are going to vote. And the big damage from the first hit. The corruption, thinks she is above the rules, tarmac with Lynch etc. That hit really hard with the small slice of swing voters and maybe more importantly reduced turnout from Ds I don't think anyone who would believe pizza gate would ever vote for Hillary lol e.g. not a swing voter to begin with
  - acdha 6y ago
    Sorry, my response needed to better clarify with a complicated mess like this. The idea I was trying to get at with “both email stories” was the attempts to blur everything together - trying to use the DNC email acknowledgment to lend credibility to all of the other stories. There were a lot of self-proclaimed infosec experts posting about how disqualifying it was. I completely agree that Comey bringing it back into the front page played a bigger role but I wouldn’t rule out all of the social media trolling having more than a little influence. It seemed to leave a lot of reporters covering non-stories lest they be accused of bias again.